The CSR factor

The conceptualisation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is based on the fact that businesses are intrinsically interwoven with concerns — social, economic, cultural and environmental. This wider socio-political milieu impinges on business and, in turn, business is impacted by such entrenched interests in society. The question that comes to the fore is: Can emerging economies, variants of capitalism, lead to alternative discourses of social responsibility from those in the West? For instance, many CSR efforts in the West, predominantly those aiming to craft worldwide standards or codes of conduct, have tried to plough a level playing field in the world where the rules of the game are equivalent for all companies. Thus far, the validity, feasibility and usefulness of the attempt to fashion universal standards have not been crucially scanned against the local contexts.

The context needs to be kept in mind while discussing CSR in emerging markets. It is proper to accept that power asymmetries in global relations, structural constraints, the position of the state and intergroup conflicts and negotiations are simultaneously played out which are often neglected in the zest to celebrate the CSR as sprouting of a conscious corporation. The crucial narratives from emerging economies need, therefore, to engage in interrogating and demystifying the CSR drumbeat, keeping a close watch on the wicked effects of corporate capitalism and neo-liberalism despite the upbeat rhetoric of irresponsibleness. The business then has to become a competent component of solution crafting and not merely cosmetic camouflaging. If a business is not quite there as yet, the potential for it arriving there is considerable once assured institutional fine-tuning is legitimised through the process of unchaining it from preordained captured interests.

The challenge for CSR in developing countries is framed by a vision that was distilled in Sustainable Development Goals — a world with less poverty, hunger and disease, greater survival prospects for mothers and their infants, better-educated children, equal opportunities for women and a healthier environment. Yet, one could claim that the need for CSR is more pronounced in developing countries since there are gaps in social provision and governance. In other words, there are fewer constituencies and institutions providing social goods in general in developing countries than in their wealthier counterparts. Under these circumstances, companies tend to come under heightened requirements and expectations to fill those gaps.

While there is evidence of successful CSR projects in developing and emerging contexts, the observation still raises an interesting question about the capacity of CSR to contribute to the development and solve some pressing problems in the neediest parts of the globe. Hitherto, the CSR debate has been dominated by US and European standpoints while what is needed is integrating the developing countries outlook to mirror the experience from the ground in the Global South. This perspective of incorporating the views from global south stems from post-development theory that also states that it is "all too easy for the rich and the experts to dominate not just in terms of the instruments for the doing of SD (sustainable development) but also and more fundamentally in terms of what SD means. This warrants an exploratory study of which category of struggles get attention and which escape the global discourse, more particularly 'whose' welfare are persisted on and whose are disregarded, what works and where what gets measured (CSR activities or impact) and what is the interplay between CSR and other governance mechanisms and institutions by the states and supranational bodies.

Hence, the crossbreeding or hybridisation of CSR (local + global) is a newfangled maturity within CSR itself. Subsequently, the studies make it obvious that CSR in emerging economies is an irrefutable phenomenon. Their contextual underpinnings in terms of socio-cultural dimensions play a tactical part in the shaping of CSR agenda and that indigenous CSR blueprints are demonstrating the approach to the "manufacture of homegrown" forms of CSR. A good deal of the literature associated with the CSR camp underscores the potential of CSR, exemplifies from "best practices," generates awareness of win-win possibilities, stakeholder discourse, corporate citizenship and triple-bottom-line possibilities. In the opponent camps of CSR, there is enhanced acknowledgement of the want for a more nuanced, empirically and theoretically grounded discerning of the contemporary role of corporations in governance and development and the prospective confines of CSR. Of late, more exhaustive inquiries into the "differential impacts" of specific CSR initiatives by corporates around the globe and the variable experiences of a developing country are the up-and-coming areas of interest.

Dr Roopinder Oberoi is Head of the Department of Political Science, Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi. Views expressed are strictly personal